After all of our photoshoots, editing and research, I collected my final images from this project.

Final Images

Darren Harvey Regan’s work – comparison

Paulette Tavormina’s work – comparison

Photomontage

Photomontage is the combination of two or more photographs, or pieces of them, to form a single image. The technique came to prominence as a Dadaist form of political protest during the First World War and was later adopted by Surrealist and Pop artists. Photomontage is often used as a means of expressing political ideas and upset. It was first used as a technique by the dadaists in 1915 in their protests against the First World War. It was later adopted by the surrealists who exploited the possibilities photomontage offered by using widely disparate images, to reflect the workings of the unconscious mind.

In 1923 the Russian constructivist Aleksander Rodchenko began experimenting with photomontage as a way of creating striking socially engaged imagery concerned with the placement and movement of objects in space. Other key artists are John Heartfield, the German artist who reconstructed images from the media to protest against Germany’s Fascist regime and Peter Kennard, whose photomontages explored issues such as economic inequality, police brutality and the nuclear arms race between the 1970s and the 1990s.

John Stezaker

John Stezaker is a contemporary British Conceptual artist best known for his collages of found images taken from postcards, film stills, and commercial photographs. Stezaker’s work resembles early-serrealist and Dada collages made by artists like Kurt Schwitters and Hannah Hoch. In his collage series “Marriage”, juxtaposed portraits of classic films stars create newly formed but disjointed characters.

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After editing and printing my images from my still life and Hamptonne shoots, I created handmade experiments as well as some on photoshop.

Handmade Experiments

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Photoshop Experiments

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GIFS

To make my gifs, I made a layer for each image, and made frames for each layer. I adjusted the delay for each image and changed the window to forever, then saved the GIF for web.

I then made another, using the same method.

Best Images

After selecting my best images, I edited them in Lightroom classic.

My vanitas images

My images are influenced by the photographer Paulette Tavormina. Paulette Tavormina is a an american still life photographer who lives and works in the city of New York. She spends lots of her time in the city’s rich markets, searching for the beautiful florals that add delicate character to her still life photographs. Paulette is heavily inspired by 17th century Still life painters: Giovanna Garzoni, Francisco de Zurbaran, and Adriaen Coorte. She particularly takes inspiration from Zurbaran’s use of mysterious and dramatic light, Coorte’s unique placement of objects, and Garzoni’s clever compositions and rich colour palette.

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I edited all my images in Lightroom, after organising them.

First shoot

Due to the lighting and weather conditions on the day, many of my images were quite overexposed – I combatted this in my editing by increasing g shadow and contrast as well as decreasing exposure.

Second Shoot

In this shoot I had difficulty with the screens in front of the tills – they added unwanted shadow to the image which made them quite tricky to edit – to combat this in the future I would maybe take the images from a different angle or in a different area.

Third Shoot

In this shoot, the same as the last, I had to trouble with the screen in front of the till. To combat this I tried to shoot slightly to the side of it. In my edits, I added contrast and warmth as well as saturation and vibrance to bring out the vibrant colours in the products inside the shop.

Walker Evans

While a staff photographer at Fortune magazine, Walker Evans produced a photo essay titled, “Beauties of the Common Tool,” which ran in the July 1955 issue. Dr. Chris Mullen has scans of the five-page spread as published, on his Visual Telling of Stories website. Images of a reamer, an awl, a bill hook, an auger, various pliers, a couple of variations on a T-square ,some wrenches and a trowel were among the tools used in the collection.

Darren Harvey – Regan

Harvey-Regan first constructed a montage of Walker Evans’s images to make new forms. He then sourced matching tools, cut them in half and re-joined various halves together, with the resulting physical objects being photographed to create his final work. The montaged tools become both beautiful and bizarre objects, in which a ratchet wrench is combined with a pair of pliers and a Mason’s trowel joined with a pair of scissors.

Harvey-Regan finds photography that photographs objects – whilst in itself being an object – interesting as a concept. “It’s a means of transposing material into other material, adding new meaning or thoughts in the process. I think photographing materials is a way to consider the means of creating meaning, and it’s a tactile process with which I feel involved. Touching and moving and making are my engagement with the world and my art”.

Photoshoot

In our photoshoot, we used 3 different types of lighting: a copy stand, soft boxes, and flash. We used an infinity curve as well as coloured background on a product table. We used 1 and two point lighting, allowing shadow to be manipulated in our images.

Here are my sets of contact sheets for my first shoot – my first sets of images at the dump, my second at the plant waste site, and my third at a local food kiosk. I used the P and X keys to select my best and worst images, and used the loupe tool to go through my images one by one – I then used the grid tool to take my contact sheets as below.

My first two sets of subjects were taken at the dump in St Helier – my first subject is a well known character, who always has his favourite hat on, with his name on. He was more than happy to be photographed and directed. My issue with my pictures of him is that the backgrounds of some of my images are overexposed – it was a very bright day. To combat this, in the future, I would try to shoot on a slightly more overcast day. However, I did the best I could to capture my subject in a way that he was not overexposed.

My second pair of subjects for this shoot, were two workers at the plant waste dump. They were slightly more shy on camera, but I did my best to photograph them how I wanted. The two gentlemen are good friends, so I wanted to photograph them together for my two or more people shoot. Furthermore, I decided to do close up shots of each subject to capture the interesting hats they both had on.

My last set of subjects for these tow shoots were the owner and employee of the Quayside Food Kiosk: Steve and I decided to photograph these two because as a regular of the kiosk, I wanted to capture the funny working relationship between the two, as well as the lady’s kind and giggly nature. One issue I had when photographing was, because of Covid, the shop window had a screen – it created too much reflection in my images. To combat this, in future, I would photograph my subject elsewhere in the surrounding environment relating to their workplace.

For my last set of images, I shot in my local corner shop, Bay Stores. I chose this location because of the interesting items within the shop, and the representation of those employees and workers who people often forget we need in the island. Again, I had trouble with a screen in front of the till, but in future I would photograph away from the till maybe.

In this shoot, I tried to photograph those in Jersey who we often forget in the background – who the island wouldn’t be the same without.

What are environmental portraits?

An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace. They typically highlight the subject’s life and surroundings.

Michelle Sank

Michelle Sank is a social documentary photographer, based in Exeter, in the UK. She was born in Cape Town, and left there in 1978. During her childhood in Cape Town, her family were jewish immigrants, who faced high amounts of antisemitism and witnessed the awful era of the Apartheid. Because of her experiences in South Africa, she became interested in documenting people and their situations both in the UK, where she is based, and elsewhere, for example the USA and Ireland.

Insula

Insula is one of Michelle’s many projects. These images were taken both in Jersey, as well as Guernsey.

“Insula eschews a specific brief though the work responds to the wealth of nineteenth century portrait photographs within the Jersey Photographic Archive that it now joins as a powerful point of interpretation. The beguiling qualities of these new photographs call to mind the position that Lewis Baltz found for photographic series, ‘somewhere between the novel and film.’ As such, Sank’s photographs offer a visual poem to the island”.  Gareth Syvret

Images from Michelle’s other collections

This image, along with many of Michelle’s other images, has a very striking background. This helps to make the subject appear more striking, creating a natural focal point to the subject’s face. This photo features an overcast and slightly overexposed background, which helps to contrast the dark tones in the subject’s outfit. The tones in this image are muted, except from the harsh black tones within the subject’s outfit. The image is slightly cool tones, with grey and very slight blue tones coming from the sky and water.

The image also has a wide depth of field, and slightly lower light sensitivity, leading to a slightly grainy image. Furthermore, I think that by capturing thus image, Michelle is commenting o what it is like to be a teen in Belfast when the picture was taken, as well as class and social aspects – Belfast after the era of the troubles, and how it affected the younger generation.

My photoshoot plan

	Inside Shoot	Outside Shoot	Multiple People Shoot
Location ideas	Condor Ferries Terminal, Skills Jersey offices, Local Corner Shop, Cafes, Shops such as Butchers, Boots, The Quayside food kiosk.	Rubbish Dump, Building Sites.	Rubbish Dump, Green Waste dump.
Subject(s)	Employees, owners, bar staff, waiters.	Workers	Workers
Shot Types	Full body, 3/4 length, headshot	Full body, 3/4 length, headshot	Full body, 3/4 length, headshot

On my hamptonne visit, I took many pictures of the insides of the buildings, in order to capture a snapshot of the era in which the building was on display as, and to document the life at the farm at the time.

Contact Sheet

Best Images

I edited my favourite images, using Lightroom Classic.

Contact Sheets

Best Images

During my visit to Hamptonne, I took pictures of objects within and around the farm. These objects were a mix of things such as crockery, food, clothing, personal objects and books.

My Best Images